Hi I'll critique your homework.
Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, you can improve them but try to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages as shown here.
Also you did a good job with your contour curves, but they're are some things you should keep in mind, I noticed some weirdness in terms of the way your contour lines on some of these shifted in their degree, wider or narrower, throughout the length of their given sausages. Don't try to increase there complexity of these as their just ways to reinforce the illusion of 3D, so have all of those contour curves facing the same direction.
Now moving to your insect constructions, there are cases where you'll try to attach a 2D shape to a 3D one, this is most easily seen in your Hercules beetle and weevil drawings, where you just attach a flat shape to the existing constructions, you should be thinking about how three protrusions exist in space.
You can see it in practice in this beetle horn demo and ant head demo.
Your use of the sausage method to draw the insects legs varies form case to case, so don't deviate from its specific requirements.The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure.
And a final note, keep using contour curves in all shapes that you draw, I see some drawings like the spider, the leafcutter and the leafhopper where you used very little contour lines.
Next Steps:
I'll ask you for 3-5 more constructions so that I can see how you improve. Good luck and sorry for any misspellings.
Hey SolonegociosSerios, thanks for the critique ^^) and sorry for the late reply, I first wanted to draw each redoes and submit them all at once, here they are: https://imgur.com/a/EgLAIgx.
Legs are the parts which are harder for me to draw, and while I think I drew them better this time, I still find them hard to draw, mainly in bending them.
I tried to make the insects as 3D looking as I could, and I think most of them feel a bit more 3D, the only insect that leaves me a bit dissatisfied is the treehopper, I thought to push myself with drawing a more complex insect but maybe it was a bit too much for me and it ended up a bit worse than the rest.
Anyway, thanks again for your previous critique I look forward to your reply!
No problem, time is a big factor when it comes to making this constructions, so take as much as you need to.
I see you are moving in the right direction here, also I wanted to make some clarifications, I highlighted above that you were using too little contour lines, a characteristic about contour curves/ellipses is that they can make a form feel more solid in its own right or in isolation, when we want to establish the relationship between two forms the best thing to do that is through the silhouette of these So keep that in mind, it is an important concept in the next lesson.
Now one important thing to point out is that in this drawing, you started with a simple form for the thorax, then went in to modify its silhouette just as you might have done for the leaves in lesson 3. So, why won't that same trick work for our forms here?. Leaves are already flat - so modifying their silhouette doesn't flatten them out more. When we do that to a form that already has its own volume however (or something that we want to feel voluminous), we do end up flattening it out. You could have tried to apply the principles that were shown in the demos I put above, like this (sorry I used Microsoft paint but you get the idea).
So to finish this critique, I want you to look at this demo of an ant leg, just make sure you start out with the sausages, precisely as the steps are laid out in that diagram - don't throw the technique out just because it doesn't immediately look like what you're trying to construct.
Next Steps:
Keep these thing in mind for the next lesson.
This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.
I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.
No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
